Sydney Meeting – June 2007

June 2007

Delphi and OpenGL – David Lyon

Traditionally most Delphi programming has been about reading and writing files and databases – and no doubt this will continue to be bread and butter programming for many.
However, built into the plumbing of Windows is OpenGL. It’s 3d subsystem of libraries that is becoming a more and more important. Many of the special effects in Vista are built using the OpenGL subsystem.
This talk covers two different styles of 3D programming, firstly, the low level method directly accessing the OpenGL libraries and then secondly, a much easier system : GLScene. This set of components provides a VCL drag and drop of 3D components that will be familiar to many Delphi programmers.
With GLScene, 3D objects can be added to Delphi forms and manipulated like any other VCL components. Thus bringing OpenGL programming within the reach of projects that many of us may currently be working on.